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AI
From 17th-century Dutch tulip mania to the dot-com crash of the early 2000s, financial bubbles have a way of inflating around revolutionary ideas… until confidence collapses. “The internet was real,” Bremmer says. “It was just wildly overvalued.” Could AI be next?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
A robot waiter, serving drinks at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair, in Paris, on May 24, 2024.
- Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Imagine sitting down at a restaurant, speaking your order into your menu, and immediately watching a robot arrive with your food. Imagine the food being made quickly, precisely — and without a human involved, because the entire restaurant is fully roboticized.
Imagine those robots were made in China, powered by the next generation of AI.
This is all quite plausible. According to the International Federation of Robotics, global sales of professional service robots reached almost 200,000 units in 2024. More than one-fifth of those units were deployed in hospitality and service roles, including front-desk assistants and food-and-beverage delivery. One cafe in Beijing is now fully staffed with autonomous robots, which can talk to customers, take orders, and deliver drinks entirely on their own. The future of AI is physical, as Ian Bremmer recently noted.
China is the epicenter, now producing the majority of all worldwide robots, while the US falls increasingly behind. One recent study projected the size of China’s service-robot industry to reach $7.2 billion by 2031, accelerated by generous government subsidies and a focused industrial policy. From a Chinese perspective this makes sense, especially in light of their looming demographic bubble. By 2050, the country will have 150 million fewer people; China is leaning into robots instead.
Keenon is a market leader. It’s worth browsing their catalogue: Kleenbot, a simple roomba-like cleaner; Butlerbot, an R2D2-esque droid for hotels; Dinnerbot, a more complex automated waiter; and XMAN, a fully scifi humanoid robot with a base like a Segway. Keenon ships to over 600 global cities with no signs of slowing down.
Many societies are not ready.
Swapping a human greeter for a robot in a hotel lobby is far more visible than swapping a human assembler in a distant factory for algorithm-driven automation. The robot is public. It is physical. And it is branded — and if the brand is foreign, the communal understanding will be simple: “their machine replaced our person.”
Robotics firms of all nationalities know this risk, and marketing materials often emphasise robots’ “assistant” roles. Yet the scale and global spread of robotic deployments will be unspinnable. Countries will face difficult questions: Do they allow foreign-made service robots for their efficiency gains? Or do they regulate and protect domestic labor, potentially excluding or throttling foreign or global robot makers?
Governments will also be confronted with a national security challenge. If your country has millions of foreign robots, each with cameras, microphones, and motors, what happens if you have friction with their maker? At minimum your robots would likely be used as widespread spies. Beyond that, foreign robotics firms could disrupt your economy by remotely disabling the robots — the manufacturer could perhaps blame vague “glitches.” In the worst-case scenario, robots could rise up as guerilla fighters against their putative owners.
In the end, China’s surge in retail and service-robot exports may be as geopolitically significant as its earlier dominance in consumer electronics. The difference now is public-facing: a robot in a restaurant or lobby is more visible than a smartphone in your pocket. And if that robot is Chinese-made, the message takes on geopolitical overtones. The next time you are served by a machine, you might also be served a symbol — of automation, of global labour shifts, and of the next global convulsion.
But after the boom, often comes the bust. China’s experience can be both a roadmap and a warning. The results of its building spree have been astounding: more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined, soaring GDP growth, hundreds of millions lifted into the middle class. But the People’s Republic is now dealing with a stagnating economy. Local governments that financed all that construction are drowning in debt. China bet on physical infrastructure. The US is gambling on digital. If AI doesn’t deliver on its promise, both could end up in the same place: buried under the weight of their own ambition.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
How do we ensure AI is trustworthy in an era of rapid technological change?
Baroness Joanna Shields, Executive Chair of the Responsible AI Future Foundation, says it starts with principles of responsible AI and a commitment to ethical development.
Shields explains that her foundation’s work “is about empowering everyone equally and enabling others to level up and be part of this revolution,” highlighting its focus on guiding the ethical development and use of AI.
She emphasizes the critical importance of information integrity, warning that AI systems trained on social media data risk amplifying conspiracy theories and divisive content. Reflecting on her experience at Meta, Shields notes, “Models that are trained with social media data… will further embed and create communities where people are… exposed to damaging content,” underscoring the need for transparency and awareness in AI-generated information.
Shields shared these insights at the 2025 Abu Dhabi Global AI Summit panel “Bringing AI Technology, Trust, and Talent to the World,” part of GZERO Media’s Global Stage series in partnership with Microsoft, which brings together global leaders to discuss the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.
As AI begins to understand us better than we understand ourselves, who will decide how it shapes our world?
Ian Bremmer cautions, "The winner or the winners are going to determine in large part what society looks like, what the motivating ideologies are." He stresses that AI’s direction is driven not by technology alone, but by the humans who design and program these systems.
"That's kind of why you need the UN and you need responsible AI governance as part of the conversation," Bremmer adds.
Ian spoke at the 2025 Abu Dhabi Global AI Summit panel “Bringing AI Technology, Trust, and Talent to the World,” part of GZERO Media’s Global Stage series in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical discussions on the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.
President Joe Biden signs an executive order about artificial intelligence as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on at the White House on Oct. 30, 2023.
US President Joe Biden on Monday signed an expansive executive order about artificial intelligence, ordering a bevy of government agencies to set new rules and standards for developers with regard to safety, privacy, and fraud. Under the Defense Production Act, the administration will require AI developers to share safety and testing data for the models they’re training — under the guise of protecting national and economic security. The government will also develop guidelines for watermarking AI-generated content and fresh standards to protect against “chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks.”
The US order comes the same day that G7 countries agreed to a “code of conduct” for AI companies, an 11-point plan called the “Hiroshima AI Process.” It also came mere days before government officials and tech-industry leaders meet in the UK at a forum hosted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The event will run tomorrow and Thursday, Nov. 1-2, at Bletchley Park. While several world leaders have passed on attending Sunak’s summit, including Biden and Emmanuel Macron, US Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan to participate.
When it comes to AI regulation, the UK is trying to differentiate itself from other global powers. Just last week, Sunak said that “the UK’s answer is not to rush to regulate” artificial intelligence while also announcing the formation of a UK AI Safety Institute to study “all the risks, from social harms like bias and misinformation through to the most extreme risks of all.”
The two-day summit will focus on the risks of AI and its use of large language models trained by huge amounts of text and data.
Unlike von der Leyen’s EU, with its strict AI regulation, the UK seems more interested in attracting AI firms than immediately reining them in. In March, Sunak’s government unveiled its plan for a “pro-innovation” approach to AI regulation. In announcing the summit, the government’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology boasted the country’s “strong credentials” in AI: employing 50,000 people, bringing £3.7 billion to the domestic economy, and housing key firms like DeepMind (now owned by Google), while also investing £100 million in AI safety research.
Despite the UK’s light-touch approach so far, the Council on Foreign Relations described the summit as an opportunity for the US and UK, in particular, to align on policy priorities and “move beyond the techno-libertarianism that characterized the early days of AI policymaking in both countries.”- UK AI Safety Summit brings government leaders and AI experts together - GZERO Media ›
- AI agents are here, but is society ready for them? - GZERO Media ›
- Yuval Noah Harari: AI is a “social weapon of mass destruction” to humanity - GZERO Media ›
- Should we regulate generative AI with open or closed models? - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Talking AI: Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains what's missing in the conversation - GZERO Media ›
- OpenAI is risk-testing Voice Engine, but the risks are clear - GZERO Media ›
- One big thing missing from the AI conversation | Zeynep Tufekci - GZERO Media ›
Who really shapes and influences the development of AI? The creators or the users?
Peng Xiao, Group CEO, G42, argues it’s both. “I actually do not subscribe that the creators have so much control they can program every intent into this technology so users can only just respond and be part of that design,” he explains. He stresses, “The more a society uses AI, the more we can influence the development of it. We are co-creators, co-influencers of this technology.”
Highlighting the UAE’s national AI strategy, Xiao points to Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, where undergraduates as young as 16 are founding their own companies.
The UAE has also launched programs teaching AI to learners aged 7 to 70 and is deploying billions of AI agents to augment productivity across industries, including oil, cybersecurity, and agriculture.
Xiao spoke at the 2025 Abu Dhabi Global AI Summit panel “Bringing AI Technology, Trust, and Talent to the World,” part of GZERO Media’s Global Stage series in partnership with Microsoft. The Global Stage series convenes global leaders for critical discussions on the geopolitical and technological trends shaping our world.